


Vendetta and Eviction

by softly_speaking_valkyrie



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Anti-Facist, F/F, Female soldiers, Hunting, Killing Nazis, Kissing, Lesbians, Love, Lovers In War, Nazi Gemany, Nazi!Hux, Occupation of Stalingrad, Romance, Russia, Russian!Phasma, Russian!Rey, Sapphic, Snipers, Snipers of Stalingrad, Soviet Union, Stalingrad, The Battle of Stalingrad, Tragic Love, USSR, WWII, WWII AU, War, War Time Lovers, World War II, antifa, female snipers, sniping, tragic lovers, warfare, world war ii au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 18:44:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14087262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softly_speaking_valkyrie/pseuds/softly_speaking_valkyrie
Summary: Heavily inspired by the Call of Duty: World at War Missions of the same name, and the plot and characters of Enemy at the Gates | Rey is an ordinary soldier of the Red Army trying to liberate the Russian city of Stalingrad from the Nazis and their brutal war machine. She becomes caught in a massacre of Russian forces at the main square at the centre of the city. By some miracle, she loves, without a weapon and the rest of her division murdered, hiding for cover in a destroyed fountain. As she tries to work out some method of escaping the senseless slaughter at the hands of fascist First Order Reich, she encounters a new ally and friend, Phasma, a withered sniper on the hunt of General Armitage Hux, Stalingrad's worst nightmare and master of its utter annihilation. With her hand missing a finger, Phasma cannot wield her rifle any further, and thus asks Rey to help her on her mission to assassinate the General and save Stalingrad from more misery at the hands of the Nazi fascists...





	Vendetta and Eviction

**Author's Note:**

> Holy hell I worked so hard on this. And I'm not saying that for attention or praise, I just needed to say it. I spent three days on this story and did not anticipate on loving writing this AU as much as I did. 
> 
> But what I do wish to convey is how much more this fic means, at least to me, than a simple World War II AU. 
> 
> There's a reason I don't refer to the enemy soldiers in this as 'Germans', and it's not a historical reason. I wanted to make this story very very relevant right now, in the world we live in. I am in no way going to apologise for my political correctness when I say, any Nazi in this world should face the same attitude they would have in 1941. This story is relevant because this is the treatment they deserve. 
> 
> This story is about destroying Nazism, not ever letting it win, or even have a single word of an argument. Nazism, Fascism is a plague, and we should be far past it. 
> 
> And this story is also about Queers in Russia. They exist, and should be allowed to exist. And if that means I have to take a true story and warp it into sapphic paraphernalia, then I'm happy to. Russian Queers are amazing. Queers in general (like me) can change the world.
> 
> And this is also me, taking Phasma, and trying to completely polarise her and make her an antifa icon. Go Phasma!
> 
> Anyway, enjoy Phasrey cleaning the streets of Stalingrad of their Nazi problem in 1941, I worked super hard on it for three days straight, with only one arm for one of those days.

Rey found herself breathing, something she was not sure she could ever do again as she lay completely, ultimately still. Although finding there was still life in her breast and as her senses began to come back to her, she held said breath in her lungs, not allowing herself to take in any more. She didn’t move a muscle, she tried not to even blink. Any, absolutely any, slightest movement, even the smallest, even if she twitched, the Nazi troops of the fascist First Order would tell. They would see her moving, sense the spark of life in her eyes and body, and they’d riddle her with bullets and add her to the necrotic mound of bodies she soon realised she was laying among.

The Nazis had bombed the city to utter devastation. They’d blown up entire blocks, let crumbling apartment buildings and department storefronts become dust and debris littering the streets. The proud city of the Motherland in which Rey had lived her entire life was now completely eroded, broken and on fire as fleets of bombers covered the skies like flicks of birds. Rey saw them in her peripheral vision as she remained deadly still.

All she could hope to be to the fascists picking off the remaining survivors of the battle was another female corpse.

They were in the fountain in the main square. It had served as a bulwark against enemy MG fire and some of the tanks until the bombers began to drop their payloads on the entire city. When that happened, Rey remembered she had huddled on the floor with the rest of the fighters until the shockwaves, the shrapnel and machine gun fire picked everyone else off. Now everyone was dead except for her.

A Nazi First Order Stormtrooper stepped up over the busted ledge of the fountain, scanning the pile of corpses for anyone who drew breath. He found one - a young fool with blood and black dust all over himself crawling for a weapon, just a pistol. The Nazi eyed him and cried out something in German, something Rey did not understand as anything but a warcry. The Stormtrooper raised the barrel of his weapon and fired almost the entire clip into the soldier and the bodies around him. By some miracle none of those bullets found Rey. She was still alive as the Nazi stepped back into the square as an enemy tank rolled on by. The treads and horsepower made the ground shake under Rey and she began to uncontrollably cry as her senses fully came back to herself. She felt the shuddering under her body.

She saw the horde of fascist bombers of the First Order flying overhead, flying eastward and preparing more munitions to barrage the city with. More tears came to her. And then her nose began to work.

The patrolling Nazis had left far enough so she could not be seen as she leaned over her right shoulder and began to vomit and didn’t stop. Rey tried to silence her wrenching, spewing her guts out from the smell of rotting countrymen and women serving as a bed around her. And she cried all the more, not weeping, but stiffly letting her sorrow come from her eyes.

She could even taste the deathly stench all around her and it ripped more chundering from her empty stomach.

After a minute or two of vomiting solids into void liquids, it passed, and she even stopped crying to herself. Rey knew she had to escape.

But to escape this mass grave, to escape the Nazi patrols all around her, she would need more than a miracle.

There was a rifle not five metres from her trembling fingers. She shuffled amongst the dead, scrambling like a trapped rodent for the weapon. Getting closer Rey could see it was scoped, which was all the better. She had never fired a round from a sniper rifle in her whole life, but there was no other option and she sensed that this was better than a machine gun in her current predicament.

She crawled the distance to the rifle, reached for it, but met not to wood and metal, but bloodied and mangled flesh of a blown up hand.

Rey looked right, to see a dirtied face burying sharp blue eyes and sauntered yellow hair. “Shhh.” The woman ordered Rey, holding a much healthier looking finger to her lips. With her other hand, she grabbed the rifle and handed it to Rey, her body hugging the wall of the fountain. If the thing still held water, she’d be underneath it, and Rey too.

“I sincerely hope you know how you use a rifle like that, comrade.” The woman told the deathly fearful brunette.

Rey nodded, lying to the blonde. From the stripes on the blonde’s shoulder, Rey could see she was a Sergeant, Third Shock Army, just like Rey, only the younger brunette was merely a Private, a common grunt.

“My name is Phasma. And you are a terrible liar.” Phasma replied, yielding the sniper rifle to Rey anyway. With her hand in such a mangled state, what else could she do? “Still, you will either learn now, or we will die.” She told the terrified brunette.

There came the noise of an engine. Not a tank but a civilian motorcar coming to the building ahead of their position. Phasma seemed to smile as she heard it like she knew who was about to arrive. At this, she began to speak in a low chant, but with a deathly seriousness. “Observe the motorcar coming into view…” She asked of Rey, and the younger comrade peered her head above the lip of the fountain wall to see the farcical procession making way for what appeared to be a VIP of the First Order war machine.

Rey heard Phasma’s clipper voice serve as an overture to her own observations.

“That man is General Armitage Hux. He is the grand architect of our beloved city’s perfect destruction, as well as that of countless others throughout all of the Motherland.” She told Rey as the new sniper scoped the face and ginger hair of the General clad in black. He had the face of a true believer of the Nazi regime of the First Order. “For three days, I have hunted him, and for three days, luck alone has saved his wretched life - with you here, this fourth day will bring his pathetic existence to a glorious end,” Phasma told her.

“What is your name, girl?” The blonde asked of Athens brunette, and she gazed at those powerful blue eyes in the middle of Phasma’s dirty face.

Rey had not spoken the entire time, words became difficult as she realised still where they were and what a tremendous challenge lay before them.

“My name… My name is Rey.”

Phasma smiled. “Rey. Sniping your target is like hunting any other animal in the world… you must stalk them for the perfectly precise opportunity. Fire at the wrong moment and your chance will be forever lost. Thus, we must wait for our master shot at General Hux.” She explained, calmly, so perfectly slowly that Rey felt a little at peace as they squalored in the mass grave.

She observed the General as he conversed with the Stormtroopers and smoked a cigar, cracking jokes it seemed. If there were rounds in the rifle Rey would no longer hesitate and slot a bullet in his brain, let the Nazis even add her to the dead for her trouble. But Phasma’s controlled tones kept her finger steady and her patience temperate.

“Why don’t we just kill him now and take our chances?” Rey asked nonetheless, still seething at what she’d covertly seen of Hux.

Phasma’s mangled paw rested on her shoulder and she scooted close to Rey, close enough to whisper.

“If we were to fire now, the fascists would have all the time in the world to replace him. They are close to victory, and there is little resistance left in this city. We must pick the most opportune moment to assassinate the General. Lest the Nazis take control of our attempt, and this fountain will be our graves, young Rey.” She told her calmly but effectively threatening.

She grabbed a hold of Rey’s arm and pulled it from her rifle, opening her palm with her still bleeding paw. With a brutish hand, Phasma pushed a large pouch of 308. Caliber rounds into Rey’s hand and clasped her fingers over them, reeling back into her sitting position and clutching her shin. More than her hand had been injured at some point. From feeling that, however, Rey determined that Phasma was missing her index finger and the others were bloodied too.

“Now,” Phasma breathed through the pain in her right leg. “Load your rifle, but wait until the bombers are directly overhead. The sound of their engines will drown out your shots.” The blonde told her.

Rey looked for General Hux but he was gone, he must have entered the building and disappeared into Nazi-held buildings. She turned to the remaining Stormtroopers gathered around his motorcar.

The bombers came swiftly, Rey was not ready, but she steadied her breath and held it in as two of the Stormtroopers became the same frame. As the horrendous sounds of overbearing plane engines drowned out all other sound, Rey fired the first round - it rifled through the first man’s helmeted head with a splatter of blood and grey matter and then continued into the spleen of the second man, getting lodged in there and killing him in moments. By the time the sounds of the engines had paused, both troopers were haunches over each other without alerting the others.

“Like a natural,” Phasma chuckled, scooting to her knees to observe, patting Rey’s waist lavishly as she eyed the next targets. “Two more by the car, then a third by the staircase.”

Rey saw them and heard the thunderous roll of the bombers coming again. Pulling back the bolt and unloading the empty round she readied herself and waited once again until the troopers became one overlapped target. One leaned in front of the other to light a fire and Rey took them out with the same bullet once again, and turned her scope to the Nazi on the stairs, cocking the bolt. She eyed his fascist head and put a hole in his skull, relishing in the act of killing Nazi scum.

“Yes, Rey! Put them down like the rats they are!” Rey heard Phasma yelling right as she saw a sixth Nazi come from around the crippled chassis of a tank. She instinctively slotted another round in his brain and he dropped like an anvil.

They both heard the bark of a dog next and Rey felt intense fear as she pulled back on the bold. There was only a single round left in the rifle.

“Shoot the dog before he gives our position away!” Phasma yelled as the bombers continued. Rey aimed but could not pinpoint the mutt as it came hurdling at her and Phasma. The blonde hunkered down and clutched at her mutilated hand. She did not wish to die from a dog ripping her throat out, and there were tales of the Nazi Shepards being so ruthless in the execution of their prey.

It was leaping over the wall when Rey dropped the rifle and swiftly pulled for her knife. She thrust it upward and the blade skewered the German Shepard’s gullet, sticking into the beast and killing them. Phasma breathed audibly.

“You are full of welcome surprises, aren’t you Rey?” The blonde asked. She leaned over to the left of herself as Rey reloaded her sniper rifle and smiled at their first and brief accomplishments. Master Huntress and Apprentice Sniper. In short minutes they had gone from being dead women to killers of Nazi patrolmen and now, told by the tone of Phasma’s voice, she wanted much more from Rey’s natural gift for aim.

The gritty blonde gripped an abandoned submachine gun and checked the capacity. With a quick reload she eyed Rey. “You are a natural with that rifle. Now keep it, use it. It is time for us to close in on our kill.” She spoke, like a minstrel or bard telling wartime tales. Her eyes were so beautiful, and yet, the darkness Rey saw within them terrified her as she stuck close to the Sergeant.

“Follow me, and stay close,” Phasma instructed, and Rey followed as they hopped the wall and sprinted with all dexterity to Hux’s motorcar and used it for cover momentarily. Phasma took point.

There was an armoured patrol ahead, slowing to a halt, but Phasma looked behind Rey and to an abandoned bistro. “Hux will have made his way to the First Order command post a few streets away from here. From there he will continue his grand scheme to lay siege to this city,” she turned to Rey. “Will you be the one to stop this senseless massacre, avenge our fallen comrades, a put a bullet into Hux’s brain?” The grizzled warrior asked timid Rey.

“I will, comrade.”

Phasma smiled at her. “Then you have earned my trust. And my protection… and this.”

The blonde pulled Rey toward her by her uniform collar. She kissed the nugget sniper roughly and briskly, cementing the concrete war bond that the fountain had birthed them into. The kiss was not necessarily one filled with romance and a mutual love or desire, but it was spurred by the moment, by the misery that General Armitage Hux had hammered so violently into the very foundations of Stalingrad. It was another act of defiance against the horrendous regime and warring strategy of the First Order’s fascist Reich. As Rey felt Phasma’s lips touch hers with determination, she realised that this was not the only act of defiance either of them had committed. They had shot Nazis, killed Nazis, and now they were rubbing their queer existence, their triumph, their survival, in the noses of the dead Nazis.

Once they were done, Phasma looked back to the bistro behind them and trotted over to the other side of Hux’s motorcar to scout the scene. “Stay with me, comrade Rey, and we shall prevail once more over the fascist rats,” Phasma instructed Rey and began to gallop into a jog to cross the deserted street to the cafe. Rey stuck behind her like fleas to an animal, clutching her rifle in both hands and concealing much of her breath in case the patrols or any other Nazi was close.

They crossed without incident and Phasma opened their way into the burning restaurant. Rey dismayed as she heard the crippling flames lick the upholstery and the furnishings of a familiar eating house and tavern. She’d been here before, in a time when the city was not a war zone occupied by the First Order. There had been many a good evening held within these walls, as the flames now lapped at them and burned the cafe to a smouldering crisp. Phasma’s defeated eyes told Rey she’d been here before as well, on different nights and times to Rey for sure. “This place… It once echoed with stories and tales of friends, family and lovers… Now… No longer.” The blonde dismayed, giving said filthy yellow hair a ruffle to free it from the dust, ashes and dirt it had contracted. She brought out a pair of goggles and rubbed the soot from the eye sockets, putting them on her forehead after doing so. Rey could only assume they had some magnification quality.

“Mark my words, Rey. One day, things will change. Fascism is doomed to consume even itself, and all those who follow its warped ideology, are nothing by sewer rats clutching to the filth. We will take this fight to them. Soon, it will be their land, their people, their blood…”

Rey only listened to Phasma’s sincere hope for the future, even in the face of such devastation and utter annihilation of their beloved city. To Rey, it seemed a little far-fetched. How could they hope to strike back against such a relentless war machine like the First Order? A war machine that could not be stopped, with a brutality to match the arrogance of their leaders. Men like General Hux, and their Supreme Leader sitting comfortably in Berlin, so far away from all this chaos. At least Phasma had her hope. Or, not hope, determination, and what seemed to be an iron-willed need for vengeance against the Nazis. Rey could not blame the woman, nor not see where such lust for revenge was coming from - she too, craved to strike Berlin now, and gut the fascist regime at the throat and silence it once and for all.

“Come, we must close in on Hux. Knowing the routines and safe places of your prey are essential to the hunt. Fortunately for us, I know all there is to about this rat.” Phasma addressed Rey, lifting the bar and clearing their path through the back of the cafe and onto the next street. According to Phasma, they were not far away from the Nazi command post and where Hux would be hiding. What their plan would be once they found an elevated position with the perfect line of sight would be to wait and continue to do so until the coward revealed himself to them. Then, Rey would take the shot, and end his plans for Stalingrad.

Their next foxhole would be another abandoned business of a once proud Russian entrepreneur. Rey couldn’t help but wonder if this was what the future looked like now, all across Europe and even Asia, all waiting for the First Order to fill the ruins with their own civilians until everything was under the banner of their Reich. Phasma looked over the storefront a moment, making sure no souls were inside.

There came a sudden noise, a nick of the wooden frame of the store, and Phasma instinctively ducked. Then came the bang, an almighty ripple through the sky like the sound of a distant explosion. Over the sound of the bombers, Rey hadn’t heard what the shots of her sniper rifle had really sounded like, but she knew now.

“Sniper!” She heard Phasma bellow but it took a whole second for Rey to even react to the gunshot that had rifled past her and nearly hit her comrade. “Get inside! Now! Move!” The blonde yelled again, and this time Rey forced herself to be moved. She tumbled through the doorway with Phasma and they hit the deck only to quickly scramble to their feet once more. There came another gunshot rippling through the air and into the store. It pierced into the floorboards near Rey’s hand and she tossed herself across the room to the doorway. “Up the stairs! Move it!” The Sergeant screamed, and she led the charge up the battered stairs with Rey following close behind, clutching her sniper rifle for dear life - now it would be their only weapon against their new foe. A rival sniper was unprecedented, and Rey felt frozen with fear, pushing past what her mind and emotions told her to keep her legs moving as they topped the staircase.

There was a tarnished sofa behind which Rey found her cover and scoped the area ahead of the gaping hole in the attic wall now before her.

“Remain steady!” She heard Phasma consoling her from behind, and Rey exhaled her fear. So long as she remained still and did not flash her whereabouts to her enemy, she would not be shot. All she had to do was find them, spot them through her scope and fold a round between their eyes. “I am going to draw his fire!” Phasma told her, and she breathed once more.

Rey felt the small wind behind her as Phasma flushed herself from cover, putting her life on a knife’s edge, on a fifty-fifty chance that the opponent would be lucky with a single round anywhere in her tall and profound body. Rey prayed to any higher power that might be taking note of their actions that Phasma be spared as she ran, and as she crossed the attic, Rey found a flash of a barrel. The enemy sniper had fired, and she had found him.

Carefully focusing on the building right in front of her, looking dead at the third window to the right of the third floor, Rey pressed her index finger on the trigger and she felt her whole body shaking as another round rocketed out of her sniper rifle.

Rey was left feeling sick again as she watched the bastard move from the window before she saw a splatter of blood where his head should be.

“He has moved…” Phasma ruminated, checking through her goggles. They certainly had magnification properties. “And now the game is cat and mouse… Watch, as I draw his fire once again. Do not miss this time, da?” The blonde asked of her partner, and Rey nodded with a furrowed, determined brow. She exhaled all fear and apprehension from her lungs and she focused all the more. She would not let Phasma die, not to this fascist rat in the building ahead who assumed he had better aim and therefore luck, or the will of his God at his side. Rey did not take much stock in divination, luck, maybe, but she would not allow this opponent to outmatch her shot for shot and strike a bullet into Phasma. Already the women had come too far to allow this rat to finish them here. General Hux still drew breath.

Phasma crossed from one side of the room to the other, before Rey had her eye aiming down the scope. She thought of a different approach and waited to see the bastard’s muzzle flash. It came swiftly after Phasma had crossed from beam to beam and she was safe. Within the span of a single second, Rey aimed down her scope and found the sniper’s face in the crosshairs. She squeezed the trigger once more and watched with lavish elation as she witnessed the sniper’s face exploding into tiny pieces of ruined flesh and detonated grey matter. He was down, and Phasma was chuckling to herself as she relaxed.

“You are a true markswoman, my dear. But the patrols will have surely have heard those shots. They will be moving the General before we can reach the Command Post. We must take a different approach.” Phasma thought right to speech, all rapidly and all aimed more at herself than at Rey as the younger woman exhaled a heavy sigh. The tension had rattled her breathing in between her holding it in to steady her aim. But it had worked. The enemy was laying without his head on the third floor of that department complex. And now they were heading right for Hux.

They soon crossed the street again, hearing the distant noises of explosions and more gunfire in other parts of the city. Comrades of other divisions of the Stalingrad Defensive Army either defending positions that had not been fully destroyed by the fascists, still holding onto every inch of Russian ground that could still be fought, bled, and died over. For the Motherland, each comrade was programmed to fight for, even Rey, and even if she did not hold the mantra above her own life or the lives of friends and family. All of her friends were in her division, all now lying dead in the fountain at the square. The only person she remotely considered a friend now, was Phasma, and she was leading the way down the street, completely silent.

Her head was surveying the rooftops, looking from building to building to try and find one she remotely knew the layout of, either from maps or from her own experiences. It was so easy and so terrible that the occupation could completely eradicate one’s knowledge of how the city used to look in the daytime.

Rey checked her wristwatch, seeing the broken face and busted cogs. When it had been broken it was seven-past-eight in the morning, that was when the massacre had happened, and Rey remembered, or hoped she did, that it was not broken beforehand. Which meant that the time must have been between nine and ten, still in the morning. Yet the smoke and ash from the city made it look like the dead of night. Truly horrendous.

“The General’s Command Post will be beyond this row of buildings. Hopefully, once we take up a vantage point, we can wait him out without being detected,” Phasma thought aloud, she looked around the street they were on and listened intently to the fighting. “Or our comrades will find us, and we can have them launch an assault while we lay in wait for our General Rat.” She planned, hoping the intensity of the fighting meant that an allied victory was at hand in the skirmish. She hoped but settled that such an outcome would be unlikely.

“What do you think, dear?”

Since when did Phasma start calling Rey ‘dear’? To the brunette, it didn’t matter. They were still in the conflict for their beloved city, and Rey was spurred and in a marksman’s zone, framing her mind for the assassination that would have to soon take place. She looked quickly at Phasma’s still almost necrotic hand and knew they was no way she could fire the Mosin Nagant in Rey’s grasp. She could hardly hold the handguard of her own submachine gun. Luckily she had not needed to suppress the enemy and protect Rey from Stormtroopers. But that time may come soon if they were detected.

Rey looked up at the buildings. “We should be moving on. The sooner we find our vantage point, the sooner we can camp in for the kill. How is your hand?” Rey found herself asking, not knowing at all why she cared so much. Her heart rate increased and the hairs on her arms stood on end.

For once, Phasma checked her paw, not even acknowledging the amount of dried red all over her palm and fingers. She barely even seemed phased that she was missing her index.

“It is nothing, comrade. I promise you… Tis just a finger. I have seven more.” She told Rey, looking so strong as she did. Yet Rey wanted to hold her injured hand and give a faithful squeeze.

“I have some water left in my canteen. Here, let me help you, Phasma.” Rey told her, holding her rifle in one hand managing to juggle the quarter-full canteen to open the lid. She held Phasma’s hurt limb and splashed some drops onto her finger, to wipe away the blood. The blonde did not look at all happy with it, yet she allowed Rey to clean her up anyway. But when they were done, Rey did not stop. She wet her fingertips and smeared the cleaning water underneath and around her Sergeant’s bright blue eyes, cleaning the blackness of ash away from them, and finally, she could see Phasma’s handsome face, rugged and bereft by war. But she did look beautiful.

Phasma seemed stunned, still holding Rey’s hand with the canteen in, stuck in their little moment until the invasion of noise brought them back into their ravaged surroundings. It was a noise that both of them heard and identified instantly for what it was.

“Armoured patrol! Inside, now!” Phasma yelled softly an tossed herself and Rey into the next house, a rather large one too. The canteen crashed onto the floor and the rest of the water spilt away.

They remained on the floor, on their bellies, Rey holding her breath again as the Panzer Tank of the Nazi arsenal along with a complement of seven Stormtroopers and another German Shepard rolled past, slowing to a halt as they saw the canteen on the road. The dog sought it out and identified it with a sharp and hostile bark to his handler. Phasma’s body stiffened next to Rey’s once again. Twice was no small thing - she was terrified of canines. Rey reached for her hand again and held it tight, trying to keep her calm. She could hear the vicious snarls and barks from the mutt, and the verbal slurring of the Nazis outside. The tank had moved on but the footmen remained, discussing Rey’s canteen. What little of their speech she knew, she felt disgustingly embarrassed and deathly afraid over. She’d compromised them and she knew it.

Just when it looked like they would not be found by the patrol, Phasma glanced at the grandfather clock to her left and saw the hands on it - they were still operational. The blonde looked at Rey with hopeless dread.

It was the time, not between the hours of nine and ten - two seconds before the hour of eleven. They were spent.

The chimes began to strike at the hour, and Rey watched as the Nazi troopers looked inside of the house, seeing them prone on the floor. One man shrieked, alerting the rest to them. “Run! Up the stairs, Rey!” Phasma cried at the top of her voice and the two women belted it up the stairs. The sounds of flamethrowers sounded off behind them and before they reached the top, the house was already on fire.

They sprinted along the second floor, but the discharge of more fire from the flamethrowers made the house soon turn into a furnace, with the wallpaper making the flames lick their way to the beams and foundations of the ceiling. Phasma was beginning to run ahead, and Rey was soon stuck in the middle of the landing by a shudder in the walls and a splintering of the wood above her. She sensed danger and was caught struck by a falling beam as it split from the attic. She dropped onto her back, and the embering wooden beam trapped her, falling onto her midriff with painful impact. It was so hot, Rey felt instantly winded by the impact and the heat burned her flesh under her uniform.

She was strained and the pain was incredible from the flames still on the wood. It was hotter than anything she had ever experienced and cried out for dear life as tears of fright and incredible. Rey tried to touch it, to shove the weight off of her body so she could move and escape the building before it came down on top of her. Phasma was gone. She’d sprinted for the exit thinking Rey was behind her the whole way, for she had been since the death pile at the fountain. When Rey put her hands on the wood, trying to push it off, her hands smouldered and the flesh of her palms under fingerless gloves boiled to a simmer. There was no way she could budge it. She was dead. She was going to die trapped by a burning piece of lumber that was surely going to fry her lungs before long. Rey was going to choke before she was crushed, and tears gushed from her eyes like rivers.

“Phasma!” She tried to cry through her weeping, but the smoke was already thick and she could hardly speak. “Phas--” She was coughing before long. The black began to come to her vision and she thought she was passing out.

“Rey! Rey! No! You will not die here, my dear! I need you alive, Rey! Listen to me, dear! Wake up! Come with me! We will escape through the window!” Phasma was shouting, louder than ever before as she tossed her submachine gun to the floor and grabbed the lumber with an almost unnatural strength. She lifted the thing up with both hands, blood coming from her severed finger again and she freed Rey from its prison. “Come on, dear! Come on!” The blonde yelled again and Rey clambered to her feet.

The Sergeant was gripping her hand tightly and holding her submachine gun in the other, pulling Rey along as they made a break for the window. “Jump!” Phasma screamed and leapt through the glass first, pulling Rey out with her.

There came a burning explosion as the ceiling caved in on itself after both women were out of the house and it was a large drop to the street below, but they were alive - Rey felt the air in her breast still and Phasma twitched as she landed. They had fallen on the concrete of the road, but they were alive.

Another small gathering of Nazis found them within moments - troopers from the patrol that had detected them in the house, along with a flamethrower that had lay waste to the domicile. He was beginning to torch the surrounding buildings already as the two men went to Phasma. Rey was helpless she was still choking from the smoke and felt weak.

One of them swatted Phasma across the face as another held her hair up, pulling on it while his friend brutalised her face a moment. Rey struggled to her face and reached for her hip. She had no idea if her Tokarev TT-30 Service Pistol was in its holster too, she had not thought to check since she had woken with it, but she didn’t care. She’d either pull it from her hip or they would riddle her with bullets. Which meant either General Hux would die or he wouldn’t - Rey did not give a single care, she wanted to save Phasma, as Phasma had saved her.

As she struggled to her feet, she found a metallic element in her hand. Her sidearm. She still had it! Pulling it from the holster she aimed at the Nazis before they noticed she was up.

“Get away from her you fucking Nazi scum pieces of shit!” Rey yelled at them, her visions till blurry but aiming nonetheless, alerting the two and the flamer to her. She blasted two rounds into Phasma’s attackers and turned around to think she was getting burned alive.

There came more gunshots, and the Flamethrower Trooper exploded in a flurry of flames that woke Rey from her near-death experience. It was reinforcements!

“Rey?!” The brunette heard a familiar friend - Tallie Lintra call her name. Tallie was in a different unit to Rey, not the front line but Russian Saboteur Corps and she was backed up with seven or so comrades from the same division, all wielding rifles and submachine guns. Rey tossed her pistol back into the holster, savouring the few bullets left in her only clip. “Rey, we thought you were among the dead at the massacre in the square!” Lintra addressed her brunette comrade, an assuring and welcome hand on her waist. They were good friends, and Rey was supremely grateful to the laws of probability and Tallie’s own skill that she had survived the day and the rest of the occupation.

“She was!” Phasma bellowed proudly as she stood to her feet and gathered her gun, wiping the blood from her nose with her equally bloody finger. The ash Rey had cleaned from her face was back again and now Rey’s own face was just as filthy. All of their Russian faces were. “Among them. But not one of them!” The blonde boasted, winking at Rey. “This comrade has a talent for cheating death the likes of which I am jealous of. I come away from the massacre with a finger lost, she comes away with everything except her unit. And a new talent in sniping!”

Rey turned to tallie, blushing under her dirty cheeks so Phasma could not see. “We are scouting a position to use as a vantage point, comrade Tallie.” She explained, clutching at the sniper rifle she had no idea she had excavated from the house.

“For what purpose, comrade?”

Phasma answered, entering their bubble. “We aim to take out General Armitage Hux, the leader of the Nazi forces and the mastermind behind our city’s misery. My finger is shot, Rey must assassinate the General. We will require a good vantage point, as well as a diversion to flush the spineless rat out from his bunker.” The blonde explained. Tallie made swift sense of it all and the rest of the resistance forces around them nodded. They knew what Phasma was asking them now.

Lintra looked at her comrades, and they all nodded at her too with brutish looks in their eyes. Revenge was their biggest source of morale today, as well as with Rey and Phasma.

“My men and I shall serve as your diversion, comrades. We will stir up as much trouble as we can cause, while the pair of you locate General Hux and end his wretched life.” Tallie talked over the plan. Phasma agreed and seemed thankful and Tallie and her team were fully willing to do this for them. It was the easiest and probably most effective way to flush Hux out to his doom. The longer Rey and Phasma would have to wait, the more Stalingrad would suffer at his hands.

Rey and Phasma both graced Tallie with loving and thankful hands on her shoulders, Rey even holding her hand too. “Thank you, comrade. I swear to you,” Rey began, looking Tallie in her splendid eyes. “I will not miss this shot. The fascist swine will die like a stuck pig like the rest of these rats.”

“Today, comrades. Today! Stalingrad is freed!” Phasma chanted, smiling, filled with glorious hopes and determination of their victory. Everything fell on Rey and her new-found aim, but the blonde had so much faith in her, she would follow her to the ends of the earth already.

Tallie Lintra held Rey in her arms, hugging her, and she even held Phasma too, then returning to her team, preparing them for a rough firefight - General Hux’s command post was just around the corner, in a yard courtyard close to the train station, and the whole plain was swarming with First Order Nazi Stormtroopers. They had Jews hanging around any high point around the yard and had been adding more to the swaying ropes for days. It was garbage, purely evil and unforgivable and as Rey thought about it, she began to feel her blood boil again.

No more Jews would be hung from a single high place in Stalingrad again after today - instead, every worthless Nazi coward would find their heads severed and their entrails ripped out from them, dying like the cowardly rats they were in the streets. The city would not be occupied after today, it would rise up against the fascist Reich and crush them underfoot. Rey would fire the first shot against the first of the Nazi leadership, and inspire more to follow. General Hux would lead to General Ren, General Rae Sloane, General Brendol Hux, and even Supreme Leader Snoke all the way in Berlin itself.

“Come, comrades! Time to raise hell against these murderous Nazis!” Tallie ordered her team and they moved out to ready covering positions to indeed, raise some hell.

Phasma was climbing a ladder to a fire escape, leading to what Rey followed the scaffolding to a fairly perfect vantage point in an attic observatory balcony window. It was perfect, how the idiotic Nazis had blown out the main wall of it, leaving a hole which was sublime to snipe from. Hux would be the inadvertent architect of not only Stalingrad’s destruction but his own. “Up this way, Rey! We must hurry before Tallie and her team become overcome!”

Rey looked up and leapt her way up the ladder. “We must help them after we deal with the General!” She called back, as they ran their way up the fire escape in no time.

“Yes, we will! We must first ensure that Hux is dead, I will defend our position while you then aid our friends and see good on their escape from the train yard.” Phasma told her, still planning everything out in a rapid fashion. How she did it so quickly was fascinating and confusing to Rey, her partner was thinking tactically and logically at a faster pace of a motorcar.

“While you defend our position?” Rey called into question.

Phasma heaved as she pulled herself up several floors even with her mangled hand. Already it seemed that Tallie’s team were beginning to set their diversion. Phasma could spit them setting up explosives and detonator wires. Tonnes of dynamite and crudely made bombs to trucks and other vehicles. They were going to cause a mass of confusion and cripple the Nazis’ will by making ten fighters seem like the whole Red Army down there. Which meant Phasma and Rey needed to hurry and be ready for Hux to make a sprint for his getaway train.

“Once you snipe Hux, the Nazis are going to know where we are, and they will send Stormtroopers to ensure we cannot live after this assassination. To have killers of leadership members live and spread tales of such a kill. It would inspire women and men all over the Motherland. It would erode their own troopers’ will. If we survive, it will make a victory grow three times the size, my dear. I will make sure these rats do not ruin our day.” Phasma reassured Rey, letting her know they were soon to be in more danger than they had been since the fountain. But the brunette had faith in her partner.

“I will not fail you Phasma. I will end Hux’s life with this rifle. You have my word.”

“And you have mine. My protection and both are as good as my heart. All three… Are yours, dear Rey. And when we make it out of this occupation, I will ask you for your time, at a restaurant I used to frequent in Vienna. Will you join me there, if it still exists?” The blonde asked Rey, as they moved onto the top floor and into the attic. Once they were prone, Phasma brought out her binoculars and asked Rey again. “Will you? Join me in Vienna?”

Rey was blushing again under the dirt. “Just the two of us? An outing?”

“Just the two of us. An outing, when all of this is over and we have broken this cursed siege of Stalingrad.”

“When we see the Nazis all dead and that Swastika on their Reichstag blown to kingdom come… I will join you in Vienna, Phasma, and I will kiss you in France.”

Before Phasma could kiss her there and then, the diversion began, Tallie had detonated a ring of magnificent explosions around the train loading yard, and the Nazis sprung into confused action, shooting desperately at the fanned out saboteurs. The alarm was whirling and there came four Panzer tanks mobilising around the train yard. They began to pepper Tallie’s line with shells, trying to break the attack, but Lintra was prepared for the Panzers. The Nazis had filled the streets of Stalingrad with so many tanks, by now they were expected behind many of the corners. Tallie’s team dealt with a couple of them - making suicidal runs with makeshift sticky bombs that destroyed the treads, followed with Stielhandgranates into the main bulk of thing, blowing the tops off of them and all operators inside. More dead rats to add to the pile that the Russians had made out of their net loss today. The hell seemed to be well and truly raised as Tallie and her team slew fascists with improvised arms but they were steadily being held at bay. To counteract the Reich’s numbers below, the detonated more explosives and began to toss Molotov cocktails into crowds of troopers, burning them to crisps. Their screams were a welcome symphony of cleansing the Nazi scum.

The murder had stopped when the victims were Nazis.

“There he comes!” Rey heard Phasma yell in her ear. She had located General Hux. “The building draped in Nazi flags! He is coming behind the armoured car!” She explained, observing him at a better magnification than Rey. The younger woman zoned in on the building and found the door, seeing a huddling congregation of Nazi soldiers and one man in an officer’s hat with the eagle and swastika of the Party. It was General Hux, under the protection of a squad. They would not last long with Rey this determined to spill fascist blood.

They took cover behind a destroyed motorcar, and one man with a rifle in his hands began to scope the battlefield for Tallie Lintra.

“Do you see them, Rey?” The blonde asked her.

“I see them! A First Order sniper is trying to locate Tallie!” Rey reported back, seeing the man ducking in and out of the cover. Hux’s last known position was still in her scoped vision and his hat was still a little visible.

“Ah! The swine!” Phasma bellowed. “The coward surrounds himself with a protection squad! We will soon make short work of him. Protect our friends, Rey. Put a bullet in his bodyguard’s head.”

Rey took the sanction and found the sniper’s face in her reticule. She held her breath to steady her precise aim and gently pressed her finger back into the trigger, firing and letting the bullet dip a little from the distance. It rifled through the air and found itself soon buried in the sniper’s brain, expelling his conscious through his helmet and exploded forehead. Parts of the grey matter lay by his corpse as he fell back at Rey saw the hat of General Hux move frantically, the coward was terrified she could see from his bodyguard’s demise.

Move, move, move yourself you fucking coward, Rey thought to herself, remaining engrossed through her scope and following the shadows that a headlight cast of him on the wall of the next building. Phasma was quiet, she knew Rey could do it herself from here, but she could chuckle when seeing the bodyguard falling into a pool of the blood leaking from his holy head. Rey’s aim was naturally impeccable, and Phasma was both proud and even attracted.

Rey found Hux once again, and he was even more skittish, but right before he was about to move, another Panzer obscured her line of sight to his shadow. And precisely at that moment, he made a run to the right, behind a wall, closer to the boarding platform of the train station. He was much closer there now and Rey could not find him through her scope. She’d lost him and her heart began to beat insanely quick. Panic was setting in as she also sensed the Nazis advancing on Tallie’s location. But to deviate from eyeing and sniping Hux right now would mean his escape, and more suffering from more cities than Stalingrad. Hux needed to get shot now.

“He is by the wall! Straight ahead of us, near the platform! You must shoot him now, dear!” Rey heard Phasma telling her, and she found the location, but not Hux.

The rat was already running for the train, and Rey heard it whistling for departure. She would not let him escape.

Calming herself, she aimed at him, finding him in the centre of her reticule. Her mind told her to shoot, but he was moving too fast that this distance for a straight shot to land in his mind. She would miss if the bullet was fired now, and this was the final chance, there would be no time for another. She breathed out all doubt, and held her next inhalation, finding him again and aiming a fraction of an inch ahead of his head.

Rey fired the sniper rifle and let absolute chance take it into her just arms.

The next thing Rey took in, was the sound of Phasma’s voice again like she had heard it in the fountain when she should be dead with the rest of those who had lost their lives there. But Phasma was not without hope, no. Phasma was laughing rather audibly, rather beautifully.

“Rey! You are a true markswoman, my love!” She was saying, getting to her feet. “A perfect shot! I think I saw his head explode from such a shot taken! Huzzah!” She bellowed and Rey felt an uplifting feeling in her body. She’d done it, she’d killed General Hux.

“Now let’s--”

An explosion rippled behind both of the women, knocking them from their perch and down the length of the building - one of the Panzers had found the muzzle flash of Rey’s rifle and had blasted the whole attic, launching them from the observatory and falling down, down and into the canal which lead to the river.

There was no savouring the assassination of General Hux, and while Rey felt life not yet let her go, as she swirled and tumbled along in the water with the current, all she saw in her vision was the submachine gun Phasma had been holding since the fountain. But as Rey swam for her life, she could see no sign of the woman who had saved her from the fountain, from the burning building, and from the Occupation of Stalingrad.

Where was Phasma? Was she in the canal too? Had she fallen to her death? Had the tank’s shell simply eviscerated her and sent her to oblivion?

Rey did not know, nor would she ever… Until 1945, when the brunette found herself present in the heart of the First Order Reich. Berlin…


End file.
